Читати українською: ХАЙ ТАМ ВІЙНА, АЛЕ ШОУ МАЄ ТРИВАТИ – Др. Володимир Іваненко
I am persistently invited to participate in the feast of vanity
In America, there are many events related to Ukraine happening. Especially now, during the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is almost impossible to keep track of all of them. Even in the region in which you live, you do not always know about everything that is happening here.
May 16 of this year I received a letter full of errors in the Ukraina Inc email with a kind of familiar addressing, which is completely foreign to the black-tie style:
“Hello Volodymyr Ivanenko!
My name is Julia and I am PR-manager at TOP USA awards – (topusaawards.сom)
As far as I know, you are a Founder at “Ukrainian University”, “Ukraina” and have Ukrainian roots. We believe you would make an excellent candidate for our upcoming book, “TOP 100 USA Entrepreneurs with Ukrainian Origins”!
The book titled “TOP 100 USA Entrepreneurs with Ukrainian Origins” and the award ceremony for the 100 heroes of the book will be presented at a large-scale event on July 22 at Cipriani 25 Broadway. The event will be covered by more than 100 media partners, and the book will be published in 10,000 copies.
More information can be found on our website – topusaawards.com
Every SELECTED hero of the book RECEIVES:
Spread of 2 pages in the book with you personal success story;
Exclusive tickets for 2 to Gala dinner at Cipriani 25 Broadway;(each $1,500+)
Personalized award statue rewarded by Hollywood star;
10 book copies for sharing among your community;
Reaching to discerning business audience during the speech at the event;
Boosting your reputation and networking among successful American entrepreneurs;
An article among the 99 nominees on a separate page of the TOP USA awards corporate website;
An opportunity to win the Grand Prize
We invite you to a short meeting to get to know you personally, tell you more about the project, and invite you to be part of the book and the historic event. Our goal is to introduce the world to the most worthy entrepreneurs with Ukrainian roots! The whole world should know about our achievements! Therefore, we are looking forward to receiving your response to schedule a convenient time for a video call.
You can book a meeting in the calendar at https://calendly.com/j_zaritska/nominee-interview-top-usa-awards
Best regards,
Julia
TOP USA Awards Team”
* * *
Before answering such, well, such an attractive invitation, I decided to find out what kind of project it is. On the website of the project, registered in the USA as TOP USA Awards Inc, it is said as follows:
“A significant number of Ukrainians have successfully opened their business in the USA. TOP USA Awards inc initiates one of its projects, which aims to show the world the opportunities that the American market offers today to people from different countries.
Later, it turned out that TOP USA Awards is a kind of reincarnation of the TV project TOP UA Awards, registered in the USA on fictitious persons.
“The business ‘’TOP.UA’’ flourished on the territory of Ukraine until the full-scale invasion of russia on February 24, 2022. Considering the situation, the project moved to the USA. From now it will be “TOP USA awards inc”, and we will highlight the top 100 lists in various areas of the USA.
There are still so many noteworthy top 100 USA award shows in different fields ahead: law, IT, design, art, etc.
Though the founders of “TOP USA awards inc”, Taras Lavrovskyi and Diana Hetun, are Ukrainians by nationality, the first event is going to be “Top 100 USA businessmen with Ukrainian roots”.
In Ukraine, star hosts, celebrities, and successful companies have been involved in the project which also published its own magazine.
Find below our photo archive and look how great it was”.
The face of the project both in Ukraine and in the USA was Kateryna Osadcha, who is presented on the project website as “the most famous and most outrageous journalist and TV presenter of Ukraine”, one of the “most influential fashion influencers of the country”, laureate of the state TV award “Teletriumph” in the nomination “Interv “Youer” (2018). Now she has a chance to become one on a US scale.
Presenting K. Osadcha, the organizers of the TOP USA Awards project for some reason keep silent that this “most famous and most outrageous journalist and TV presenter of Ukraine” is an employee of the TV channel “1+1” of Igor Kolomoiskyi, against whom a criminal case was initiated in the USA and who, therefore, is here under sanctions.
Yuriy Gorbunov, Honored Artist of Ukraine, producer and, by the way, a former employee of “95th Quarter”, and part-time Osadcha’s husband, are presented as K. Osadcha’s partner on the website.
It seems that Osadcha and Gorbunov simply escaped from the war in Ukraine, and Gorbunov also fled from participation in Teroborona.
Another interesting person will take part in the “exclusive event” planned for the summer – People’s Artist of Ukraine, singer, actress, TV presenter and philanthropist Tina Karol.
“All guests have a unique opportunity to experience her captivating voice and intense stage presence live. Tina will be present throughout the event, performing several of her most popular songs and joining the guests at their tables,” the organizers of the TOP USA Awards praise the controversial celebrity in every way.
Well, so that the participants of the “exclusive event” do not remain hungry, they will be fed by Yevhen Klopotenko (he is called Ivgen for some reason) — a famous Ukrainian chef, co-owner of the restaurant “100 Years Forward” in Kyiv and the bistro “Others” in Lviv.
This is Klopotenko, who in 2020 “launched the initiative to recognize borscht as an intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine by UNESCO.”
Several dozen entrepreneurs have already become the first entrepreneurs to be among the participants of the advertised event. Obviously, the recruitment of participants is very difficult. Therefore, the list includes not only “American businessmen with Ukrainian roots”, but also Ukrainian entrepreneurs who are connected to the American market, but have never been and are not actually American entrepreneurs (for example, Rostyslav Kisil or Ihor Fostenko), as well as those who do not have Ukrainian roots.
Perhaps the difficulties with recruiting and the possible disruption of the event, which has a budget of over one and a half million dollars (yes, $1,500,000+!) and for which a space has already been rented in New York, can be explained by the insistence with which the organizers of the show began to recruit me as well. Within ten days after May 16, the PR project manager Yulia Rudenko sent me seven reminders. But not just reminders, but demands to volunteer for a telephone interview.
And I delay and delay everything… Because I am thinking of how to delicately explain to the organizers that I do not cooperate with toxic people and that during such a terrible war in Ukraine, even in the USA, far from the front zone, it is completely inappropriate for Ukrainians (even those who do not care about Ukraine!) to hold such ostentatious events…
My own experience suggests that this venture with the TOP USA Awards is questionable even from a purely technical point of view. Once upon a time, in cooperation with the Washington Group of Ukrainian Professionals (The Washington Group), following the example of our Canadian colleagues, we tried to compile an advertising and information directory of Ukrainian businesses in the USA. So, we did not manage to collect the material even for a thin book.
Therefore, it is hardly possible in principle to pool up together one hundred of the most successful businesses with Ukrainian roots in the USA, with millions of turnovers. Let them also attract a fairly rich diverse audience, which has a purely formal relationship with Ukraine, which has never been interested in the Ukrainian cause and which, perhaps, has become active now only because Ukraine is in trend, and therefore, you can raise your rating on this, is just blasphemy.
It is also sad that our business people are ready to splurge on a fancy banquet during the war, but it is not up to them to support the idea of creating a powerful Ukrainians Worldwide Movement. It turns out that it is better to spend tens of thousands of dollars at a vain event than to donate even one dollar to a public cause and structural transformation of Ukraine.
By the way, knowledgeable people told me that one of those who had already auditioned to participate in the TOP USA Awards, in peacetime liked to ride on military planes, paying for access to the cockpit with bribes. I think he logged enough hours to fly a fighter jet in wartime, but he didn’t.
* * *
What is the purpose of the TOP USA Awards? Of course, formally — support of Ukraine. Well, the truth is, not directly to the Armed Forces or anyone else, but to refugees. 50% of the ticket sales and 100% of the funds from the charity auction, which will be held during the event, are promised to be transferred to the CashForRefugees charity fund, founded by one of the honorable nominees of the TOP USA Awards, Semyon Dukach, who positions himself as… Russian-American businessman and who, allegedly, together with his Odesa wife Natasha Dukach, has already “financially supported more than 15,000 Ukrainian refugee families.”
Semyon is famous not so much for being the executive director of Techstars in Boston, the head of public trading of Sharpspring and the founder of Fast Engines and One Way Ventures, and not even for the fact that he invested more than 100 million dollars in technology startups founded by immigrants, among whom there are many Ukrainians (names the latter we have not been able to establish yet) and made more than 100 “angel investments”, and as a former professional blackjack player who managed to turn $300,000 into $2,000,000,000 in a very short time.
Here is what the English-language Wikipedia says about him:
“He played with Strategic Investments and later was one of the founders and leaders of the Amphibian Investments team whose exploits are described in Ben Mezrich’s Busting Vegas and mentioned in Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House. Dukach was the main character in the film “Wrecking Vegas” and the only member of the MIT blackjack team to be referred to by his real name in both books.”
In short, a man-legend, albeit with, to put it mildly, contradictory preferences…
* * *
In the process of communication with Julia Rudenko, I asked that the TOP USA Awards organizers add their signatures to the Appeal initiated by the Organizing Committee of the World Ukrainian Movement on March 12, 2022.
Miss Rudenko assured me that she “distributed the invitation to the team members.” No signature, however, was received. For me, this is an indicator of how people with Ukrainian roots feel about Russia’s war in Ukraine, and in general, a measure of the level of their national consciousness and civic maturity of people.
Volodymyr Ivanenko
May 25, 2023
Donate to Ukrainian University & Ukrainians Worldwide Movement | Складіть пожертву на Український Університет і на Рух Світового Українства
Dr. Volodymyr Ivanenko | Др. Володимир Іваненко 